Schlesinger Library

Florynce Kennedy

In 1974, People magazine called Florynce (Flo) Kennedy “the biggest, loudest and, indisputably, the rudest mouth on the battleground where feminist activists and radical politics join in mostly common cause.” Lawyer, civil rights and women’s rights advocate, and gadfly, Kennedy was delighted with the accolade. She used her flamboyant attire and outrageous comments to draw attention to injustices of all kinds from the 1960s until her death in 2000.

Kennedy left Kansas, where she was born in 1916, for New York in 1942, graduated from Columbia University in 1949, then applied to Columbia Law School and was turned down. When she threatened to sue, a spot suddenly opened. She graduated in 1951, established a practice, and began taking on cases tied to her increasing involvement in the women’s, civil rights, and reproductive rights movements.

Kennedy established the Media Workshop to fight racism in advertising, represented H. Rap Brown and the Black Panthers, and founded the Feminist Party, which nominated Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm for president in 1972. She was one of the instigators of the Miss America Pageant protest in 1968 and organized a “pee-in” in Harvard Yard in 1973 to protest the lack of women’s bathrooms in university buildings.

Her papers at the Schlesinger Library document Kennedy’s lifetime of outspoken activism and include video tapes of the Flo Kennedy Show, which aired on Manhattan Cable Television in the early 1990s. Among the artifacts in the collection are two of her signature cowboy hats.

RENOVATION UPDATE:

The Schlesinger Library building is closed for renovation from November 2018 through early September 2019. During this time, researchers can access the Library’s collections, by appointment, via a temporary Reading Room in Fay House, Radcliffe Yard.

Since all Library collections are now stored off-site and seating in the temporary reading room is limited, advance notice of at least 3–4 business days is required. Appointments can be made via our Ask a Librarian form.

Related Collections

When the National Organization for Women (NOW) was formed in 1966, its statement of purpose read “the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the quality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings.”

The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century.

Author and activist Barbara Deming is known for her nonviolent political activism. She became politically active in 1959 and demonstrated for peace and civil rights. In the early 1970s, Deming became a feminist, came out as a lesbian, and concentrated her efforts on women's and lesbians' issues.

Related Exhibitions

From its earliest days and throughout much of the 20th century, the American legal system created and sustained gender inequality. However, this same legal system has shown that just as it can constrain and restrict rights, it can also expand and enlarge them.

This exhibition highlights the work of the influential feminist photographers Bettye Lane and Freda Leinwand, who captured the tumultuous era of the women’s liberation movement between the late 1960s and 1980s.

The 75 documents and objects in this anniversary exhibition evoke the depth and breadth of the Schlesinger Library’s holdings. They tell 75 stories—harrowing, heartbreaking, pathbreaking, brave—about American women’s lives and about the history of the library itself.